EDUCATE! ORGANIZE!! MOBILIZE!!!
These are the three pillars on which Ed Notes is founded – providing information on current ed issues, organizing activities around fighting for public education in NYC and beyond and exposing the motives behind the education deformers. We are part of a tiny band of resisters. Nothing will change unless YOU GET INVOLVED IN THE STRUGGLE!

Friday, February 15, 2013

Brooke Parker on Public Schools: What’s Mayoral Control Got to Do with It?

Great piece by parent activist Brooke Parker with historical perspective on my old District 14 scandals. One of the funny things I found was how when the attacks on the districts came from the proponents of mayoral control they landed on the black and Latino run districts while white -- very much Hasidic run District 14 which had as big a scandal as one could imagine (and the district UFT people were up to their ears in it) was ignored.

Public Schools: What’s Mayoral Control Got to Do with It?

At the public hearing to co-locate a
charter elementary school in the only public middle school in
Greenpoint, a parent stood up and asked, “If the NYC DOE [Department of
Education] is doing such a poor job by parents, why don’t we open
more charter schools?”

Those who think the solution to fixing the problems of urban
education is to redirect taxpayer dollars to privatized charters don’t
understand what parents want. We want an end to Bloomberg’s “my way or
the highway” totalitarian mayoral control of our schools. Before hopping
into another dysfunctional relationship with the next mayor, it’s worth
discussing our painful love affair with public education, and an
abusive city DOE, in order to find our way out of this mess.

In 2002, the mayor wrested control of our public schools from what
for thirty years had been the decentralized power of local school
boards. This much authority given to the mayor to appoint the New York
City schools chancellor, set policy, and create budgets was radical and
unprecedented. School boards were erased and the city Board of Education
became the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP). A voting body might
sound democratic, but the majority eight out of thirteen PEP members
are appointed at the pleasure of the mayor. Imagine the public outcry if
the U.S. President were able to assign members to the House and Senate
as a rubber stamp for all of his policies. The PEP has never voted
against Mayor Bloomberg, even as so many of his controversial policies
don’t make any sense for public schools. The one time PEP members
threatened to vote against Bloomberg with the use of high stakes tests
to end social promotion for third graders, Bloomberg removed those
appointees the night before the vote in what was dubbed the “Monday
Night Massacre.”

Anyone familiar with abusers knows that the first step in developing
compliance is to isolate your “partner.” This sheds light on some of
Bloomberg’s restructuring initiatives under mayoral control.
He abolished geographic district groupings of schools into “regions” (a
larger geographic area of neighboring district schools), abandoning
regions in favor of “networks,” a nonsensical, conceptual grouping of
supposedly like-minded schools from across the city. This is what we’re
stuck with today, where my daughter’s network is no longer located in
the community where the school is housed, but shared with other isolated
schools in Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island. The system
is bizarrely byzantine and utterly disempowering for parents and
community members. Finally, the district superintendent, once charged
with hiring and firing our district school principals, has been
thoroughly neutered. Superintendents aren’t even allowed to visit
their district schools without an invitation.

The great irony of Williamsburg complaining about mayoral control is
that District 14, which includes Williamsburg and Greenpoint, was held
up as a prime example of what wasn’t working with school boards, with
over two thirds of our school board seats held by the Hasidic and
Polish community even though their combined enrollment in our D14 public
schools was less than 7%. Latinos, representing 80% of students
enrolled in D14 public schools, were constantly outvoted on issues that
were critical to their schools, not the least of which was choosing a
superintendent to hire principals and develop curriculum.

The D14 school board, with the help of its 20-year superintendent,
William “Wild Bill” Rogers, was shockingly littered with scandals and
improprieties, from explicitly segregated buildings to 6 million dollars
of public funds funneled into a girls’ yeshiva through payments to
no-show staff for schools with phantom students. The absurd residual of
this corrupt school board’s disregard for the Latino families they
should have been serving is still seen in the oddly named PS380 John
Wayne School, which is located in the Hasidic section, with majority
Latino enrollment, and named after the Hollywood actor because
Superintendent Rogers was a big fan. Students at PS380 sometimes refer
to their school as “Juan Wayne.”

Ten years of the mayoral-control experiment hasn’t lessened
corruption or cronyism; it’s just citywide now, rather than local.
Emails released between former Chancellor Joel Klein and Eva Moskowitz,
CEO of Success Academy Charter Network, revealed the special access
Moskowitz had to the chancellor and the favoritism she received,
all while co-location hearings showed overwhelming opposition to Success
Academy schools by local communities. Who was the mayor serving? Even
as I write this, a Daily News article discusses a recent PEP vote that
approved renewing a 4.5 million dollar contract for Champion Learning
Center LLC, in spite of Champion being found to have improperly billed
the city for 6 million dollars in previous years.

The reaction from parents to the field of mayoral candidates has been
lukewarm, since we know that after the election our only recourse will
be Bloomberg’s snide suggestion to “Boo me at parades.” There are no
authentic checks and balances against mayoral control. Each candidate
simply asserts that she or he will make a better Ruler of All Schools.
Abuse of power is a plague, and accountability to the public is the only remedy. So what can we do?

As it turns out, a lot. And now is the time. Parents can take a
lesson from advice given to victims of abuse: Change the narrative of
power and rebuild the relationships your abuser severed. Don’t believe
the mayor when he implies that public school teachers are your enemy.
Don’t accept that parents should only be “involved” in their childrens’
schools.

Parent involvement just means helping your kid get to school on
time and reading to them. Parent engagement is what we’re after—where
people with skin in the game get a meaningful say in policies that
directly impact our children. In short, democracy.

We need to start taking advantage of some of the systems that are
still in place (due to state laws that Bloomberg wasn’t able to change),
including School Leadership Teams (SLTs), where an equal number
of elected parents and teachers develop their school’s Comprehensive
Educational Plan (CEP) and align the CEP with the school-based budget.
SLTs are designed to be democratic institutions. We can form
advocacy groups within each public school to keep our school communities
informed about what’s happening on the local, state, and national
level. We can end any false competition between neighborhood
public schools through parents working together to ensure that all our
neighborhood schools are great.

We can attend our district Community Education Councils (CECs) and
run for CEC positions (applications available in February). The CECs
are really only advisory, but they can be a powerful mechanism for
gathering community input and setting an agenda for our district. If we
want a local say in our local schools, we need to be ready for it.

We have to press every mayoral candidate to stand against mayoral
control beyond lip service to parental involvement and input, and reform
the structure of absolute power that has been absolutely corrosive
to democracy. Remember, mayoral control has only been in place for ten
years.

And the mayor isn’t the only elected official in town. State
government is just as essential. Mayoral control is a New York State
law, and sometimes it appears that there is gubernatorial control of the
state Department of Education. Governor Cuomo’s Education
Reform Commission came out with a list of statewide
policy recommendations, but didn’t include a single public school parent
on the panel. The list of recommendations reflects this absence. Skin
in the game, people.

Fighting this fight may seem like a lot of work, but sometimes it’s
just a matter of making a phone call or signing a petition. More than
anything, we have to vote every time there’s an election—especially
the local elections.
Democracy is never a fait accompli, but involves ongoing
participatory action. We’ve been conditioned to see mayoral control as
in our best interest, lest “we, the people” misuse our power. Think
about that for minute. Can you imagine our Founding Fathers putting a
special clause in the Constitution calling for absolute power for those
occasions when “we, the people” couldn’t handle the responsibilities
of democracy? Any elected official, be they city, state, or federal,
that believes “we, the people” are too inefficient or vested to decide,
or too lazy or stupid for power, is un-American, and Americans should
vote them out.

The great American philosopher John Dewey describes the charge of
public education as creating democratic citizens who will design the
pluralistic society we will live in together. How can we possibly teach
our children to be democratic citizens, to have the personal,
collaborative, and creative power to make their own worlds, if we have
ceded our own?
There are groups working on policies in support of our public
schools, including our very own WAGPOPS! (Williamsburg and Greenpoint
Parents: Our Public Schools!) To find out more about WAGPOPS!, including
information on the next public meeting, LIKE us on Facebook
at: www.facebook.com/WilliamsburgGreenpointParents.

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Why Karen Lewis Reads Ed Notes

"A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

What media call "philanthropy" for the public schools are actually seed monies to establish a private "market" in publicly-financed education - an enterprise worth trillions if successfully penetrated by corporate America. Cory Booker, one of the "New Black Leaders" financed by the filthy rich, is key to creating a "nationwide corporate-managed schools network paid for by public funds but run by private managers.

"Ed Reformers" want to cash in on public education and to control its content and outcome, not improve it. Provide great education? Baby boomers had as close as this country has ever gotten to it when we were growing up. The Ed Reform Movement has no interest in seeing such a well-educated, democratically astute population ever again.

History of the UFT Pre-Weingarten Years

This award-winning series of articles by Jack Schierenbeck originally appeared in the New York Teacher in 1996 and 1997.

Naturally, from a certain point of view. But, despite certain biases, Schierenbeck, a great guy, was one of the best NY Teacher reporters so this is worth reading. Jack suffered a debilitating stroke many years ago (I used to get secret donations to ed notes from him through a 3rd source.)

“The schism in the union over radical politics [is] a major reason for stalling the growth of a teacher union for decades.” Revolutionary politics and ideology take center stage, as the original Teachers Union becomes a battlefield, pitting leftist against leftist and splitting the union.

Clarence Taylor's "Reds at the Blackboard" focused on the old Teachers Union which disbanded in 1964 after suffering from anti-left attacks.

Effective Union Organizing

A video series put together by Jason Mann from the British Columbia Federation of Teachers about social media and how to use it for effective union organizing.

The first series was called New Media For Union Activists Roadmap and it's still available on-line at:http://www.newmediabootcamp.ca/welcome/I watched some of them and need to rewatch as they are loaded with information.

The second series started last week and it's called "Online Campaigning for Union Activists"

7 weeks Old - Nov. 2011

You Don't Have A Choice - Join the Revolt

Hedges says, There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history.

Interesting commentary on Bloomberg Model

"The Bloomberg model has positioned parents as customers, and principals as CEOs, with student outcomes as the product. But the backlash that the mayor has faced is from parents who don't see their schools that way. Test scores aren't always what parents care most about in a school. Many care just as much about having teachers they can connect with, places they and their children feel comfortable and respected, a school's history in the community—things that aren't quantifiable o a standardized exam."

Ex-Harlem Success Teacher Comments on Eva the Diva

I am a former Harlem Success teacher. Not many people who work/worked for her like her very much. I once made the comment that she is very nice when I first was hired. Two of her closest colleague responded immediately almost in unison, "Eve is not nice!" Over time I realized that there was a lot of political games going on. Another colleague once said to me that he was tired of "being part of a political campaign." Sending out 15,000 applications for only 400 seats in a school is reprehensible. The money that paid for those mass mailings could have paid the yearly salary of another teacher not to mention the heartache of all those parents who applied but did not get a spot. She does good work trying to give disadvantaged students a quality public school education but at a great cost to staff AND the school's educational budget! school budget.

GEM's Julie Cavanagh Debates E4E member on NY1 on LIFO and Seniority

Davis Guggenheim Compared to Riefenstahl

“Waiting for Superman" is the second most intellectually dishonest piece of documentary work I have seen. It is surpassed only by Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," the pro-Hitler propaganda classic, in that regard. Uses personal narratives of adorable children to create narrative suspense that overrides public policy discussion with pure emotion in unscrupulous attack on teachers and their unions, among others

Timothy TysonProfessor of African American Studies and HistoryDuke University

A Familiar Voice on Unions

"We must close union offices, confiscate their money and put their leaders in prison. We must reduce workers salaries and take away their right to strike"- Adolf Hitler, May 2, 1933

Leonie Haimson on MSNBC

How Teaching Experience Makes a Difference

Even as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Michelle Rhee and others around the nation are arguing for experienced teachers to be laid off regardless of seniority, every single study shows teaching experience matters. In fact, the only two observable factors that have been found consistently to lead to higher student achievement are class size and teacher experience, so that it’s ironic that these same individuals are trying to undermine both.- Leonie Haimson on Parents Across America web site

Outsource our children

Harlem $ucce$$ Academy Ad

Weingarten Sellout Tour Continues

With the myriad of anti-teacher crap pervading the headlines, AFT President Randi Weingarten thinks it's a good time to discuss faster ways to fire us.

Weingarten/Gates Foundation announce drone-driven teacher evaluation

According to a press release issued by the Gates Foundation, the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, these three have entered a ground-breaking partnership to evaluate teachers utilizing the drone technology that has revolutionized warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A bird-size device floats up to 400 feet above a classroom and instantly beams live video of teachers in action to agents at desks at Teacher Quality Inspection Stations established by the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

When asked if the drones were authorized to drop bombs on teachers who exhibit inadequacy, Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, replied, "Don't be ridiculous. Gates money puts other methods at our disposal."

Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.5-million-member American Federation of Teachers said the powerful union has signed on to the drone project...

Why did Waiting for Superman get snubbed and Exit Through the Gift Shop get nommed?

Davis Guggenheim’s doc about poor kids and charter schools got 11 major film award nominations and won four, including the National Board of Review and Sundance Audience Prize. Most pundits thought it a shoo-in. He won an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth, and had major help from Bill Gates, Oprah and Obama. Some fear prankster Banksy’s Exit Through the Gift Shop is all a hoax.

Why it happened: Guggenheim’s big backers may have actually irked independent-minded Academy members. Worse, his teacher’s union-bashing film was embraced by conservatives, one of whom said his Oscar snub is “the price a political apostate pays in Hollywood for straying off the liberal plantation.” Education expert Diane Ravitch trashed it as inaccurate. A more dispassionate expert says, “The first response to the movie was that it’s about poor black kids, and it’s from the Gore guy, so it must be liberal and good-hearted. And then Ravitch and others portrayed it as basically right-wing propaganda, which unsettled the liberal members of the Academy. I don’t think the movie is as reactionary as Ravitch portrayed it, but I also don’t think it’s very good.” An Oscar doc voter agrees. “It was a great deal of hype. I felt like I’d seen the story before.” “It also tanked at the box office, relative to what was spent on promoting it,” adds the education expert. “The true unforgivable sin in Hollywood!”

Teacher Value-Added Data Dumping by Norm Scott

The Real Reason Behind Push for Standardized Tests: It's All About the Adults

On standardized testing in our schools

A must read article about the standardized test industry.Written by an insider who has worked as a test scorer, the article outlines a multinational industry based on an army of temporary workers paid by the piece at $0.30 to $0.70 per test, translated in the need to grade 40 tests per hour to make a $12 salary. The article goes on to show how the companies gauge the grading "results" based on the need to ensure new contracts to continue profiting off of our youth. The original article is from Monthly Review. Here it is on Schools Matter blog.

From Sharon Higgins

Parallels between America today and Germany in the 1920's and early 30's

"Resentment and obstruction are all the right wing in America have to peddle. Their policies are utterly discredited. Their ideology - even by its own standards - is a sham. They are so bereft of leaders, their de facto leader is a former drug addicted, thrice-divorced radio talk show host. That is literally the best they can muster. But they have built a national franchise inciting the downwardly mobile to blame the government, not the right, for their problems, exactly as Hitler did in the 1920s."

Norm on the radio at "The Mind of a Bronx Teacher"

I was asked to cover for a guest too chicken to appear by Bronx Teacher on his penetrating weekly internet radio show (every Tuesday night at 9pm).

"The union has consistently been giving back since 1968."

He asked some great questions and I had a chance to get into issues in terms of historical context of the UFT - the '68 strike, the '75 massive cuts to schools and other issues to help prove my point that Randi Weingarten DID NOT CHANGE DIRECTION but continued and amplified the policies set in motion by Al Shanker.

Chicago View of Unity/UFT on Charters

After many meetings and debates, the Chicago delegation succeeded in working with the New York United Federation of Teachers, Local 2 (UFT) to push the AFT to take stronger stands on charter school accountability and school closings — though many delegates from Chicago would have liked the language to have been even stronger.

Generally speaking, the New York delegation represented organizing charters as the best model for handling their role in reshaping unions, despite the fact that according to many reports few charter schools in New York have been organized as is the case in Chicago. This logic is the same touted by the Progressive Caucus of the AFT. The few that have been organized are a part of the UFT local though they have separate contracts negotiated with the help of UFT. The Chicago delegation reflection the mindset that allowing new charters to continue to proliferate while attempting to organize existing charters is an end game in which public schools and the union lose.

Ed Notes Greatest Hits: HSA Rally and Founding of GEM

Angel Gonzalez and I attended that rally and used the footage to promote our conference on Mar. 28, 2009, which is where the concept of a group like GEM emerged. Until then we had basically been a committee of ICE working with the NYCORE high stakes testing group. The actions of Eva and crew helped spawn GEM. Mommie Dearest!!

I have more video somewhere. I was hoping to get Leni Riefenstahl to edit it but she died. We would have called it "Triumph of the Hedge Fund Operators."

An Oldie But Goodie: The Disparity Gap

Charter Schools and Tracking

Thanks for getting this posting some of the air it deserves, Norm.I think ceolaf is right about a great number of things, and particularly appreciate his systemic, meta-view of these hot button issues.

I want to substantiate a few of the points raised in this post:

1. "Charterness" is not a condition for school innovation.

Just as the reverse is not true(a a charter school is by definition innovative), public schools that are NOT charters can be innovative.The original small schools movement of the late 80's and early 90's (now coopted and transformed by Gates/DoE)spawned a number of pedagogically innovative schools.In District One, educators, administrators and community members started a handful of still popular and sucessful small schools within schools to pull back the fleeing local residents into public schools.Those Dewey-based, child-centered schools offered curriculae based on whole language, constructivist math, mixed age groupings, integrated curriuculum projects and portfolio evaluation

2. Tracking on a large scale does indeed exist.Gifted and Talented and CTT programs are used as sorting hats that are increasing racial isolation in many schools and communities.I would like to be able to substantiate this trend in the latest round of admissions, but as usual, have no access to that data from DoE yet (believe me I try)!

3. Special Ed service availability is, as ceolaf suspects, one more way to segregate and track:The two (soon to be 3) charter schools serving the District One community offer NO CTT or self contained classes.The "other public" district schools operate with plenty of both (w/ the exception of a few elite schools- a citywide K-12th G and T , a "dual language" Manadarin pre-k through 8th grade program and an elite selective HS), yet the charters offer no more than SETTS services to students.Despite the rhetoric of least restrictive environments and innovative methods for servicing students with special needs that you may hear from the OCS patricians, parents with kids with IEPs that require more services or more restrictive environments know that they need not apply to these schools.

Video of Chicago's George Schmidt and CORE Shredding Arne Duncan and the Chicago Corporate Model

Great Post on Teacher Quality at the Morton School

I'm very tired of the myth that schools are bursting at the seams with apathetic, unskilled, surly, child-hating losers who can't get jobs doing anything else. I recently figured that, counting high school and college where one encounters many teachers in the course of a year, I had well over 100 teachers in my lifetime, and I can only say that one or two truly had no place being in a classroom.